Many Kaliningrad residents have developed an affinity for European countries because of the city’s proximity to Poland and Lithuania
Photograph: Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images

When relations between Moscow and the west plummeted in 2014 over Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea, pro-Kremlin media went into overdrive. They portrayed European countries as morally depraved, harbouring a visceral hatred of Russians. The foreign ministry warned travellers abroad against the risk of being “seized” by vengeful western intelligence agencies.

For residents of Russia’s vast heartland – the overwhelming majority of whom have never travelled to Europe – it was a potent and powerful propaganda campaign. Anti-European sentiment rocketed to its highest level since the cold war (the first one, that is).

But in Kaliningrad, it was a much harder sell.

A little parcel of land smaller than Wales wedged up against the Baltic Sea, Kaliningrad has no common border with Russia, which is almost 300 miles to the east – and unlike most Russians its residents travel frequently to the EU. The city centre is 75 miles from the Lithuanian border, and a mere 30 miles from Poland. At weekends and on public holidays, there are long tailbacks at both border crossings. Gdansk, the nearby Polish port city, is a particularly popular destination.

“I travel to Poland a lot and see how people relate to Russians. Everything is fine, there are no problems,” says Alexander, a 35-year-old office worker. “The Poles are people, just like us.” Like many others here, he dismisses the state-run Russian media’s unflattering depictions of European countries as “lies”.

Kaliningrad has no common border with Russia. Photograph: David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters

Many Kaliningrad residents travel to Poland and Lithuania to stock up on western foodstuffs banned by Putin in 2014 in response to European and US sanctions. Although the quality of Russian-produced cheeses and hams has improved slightly in recent years, there remains a deep hunger for forbidden culinary delights: parmesan, camembert and jamón.

“It’s just like when I was a kid in the Soviet Union,” says Alexei Chabounine, the 48-year-old editor of a local news website. “Back then, we used to go to Lithuania all the time to get meat, milk and other things that we couldn’t get hold of in Russia. Of course, there were no borders then.”

“Even a trip to a Polish supermarket can have an influence on people,” says Anna Alimpiyeva, a sociologist. She notes that over 70% of Kaliningrad’s roughly one million residents have a passport, compared to a nationwide figure of lower than 30%.

People have always likened themselves to Americans – our families came here from places across the Soviet Union

Oleg Kashin

That’s not to say that Kaliningrad is a bastion of liberal values. In the compact city centre – a mishmash of Soviet-built flats, public squares and modern shopping centres – it’s not uncommon to see people wearing T-shirts depicting Russian Iskander nuclear missiles, which the Kremlin deployed to the region in February.

Local authorities have cracked down on independent media and opposition activists, while NOD, the ultra-nationalist pro-Putin movement that blames westerners for most of Russia’s ills, has a thriving local branch. “Most of these people still go to Poland or Lithuania to do their shopping though,” laughs Chabounine.

During the communist era, getting from Kaliningrad to Moscow by land involved nothing more complicated than an overnight train journey through neighbouring Soviet republics. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Kaliningrad suddenly found itself cut off from Mother Russia by the newly independent countries of Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania. A decade later, when Latvia, Lithuania and Poland joined the EU, Kaliningrad residents required visas to travel overland to Russia.

This sense of geographical isolation is reflected in common expressions: ahead of trips to Moscow, people will routinely say “I’m going to Russia”; one local laughed when I pointed out he was already there. On national TV, Kaliningrad is sometimes left off weather maps.

A Victory Day military parade in Kaliningrad marking the anniversary of the end of the second world war. Photograph: Vitaly Nevar/TASS

The Soviet collapse was the latest twist in Kaliningrad’s strange history. Founded by Teutonic knights in the 13th century, it was previously known as Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia, where Prussian kings were crowned. At the end of the second world war, the city was annexed by the Soviet Union and renamed in honour of Mikhail Kalinin, a Bolshevik revolutionary.

After Stalin expelled the ethnic German population, Soviet citizens were shipped in to repopulate it – many were Russian military families who described their move to Kaliningrad as “moving to the west”. Lyudmila Putina, the Russian president’s ex-wife, was born here in 1958. A key outpost for the Soviet military, the entire Kaliningrad region was strictly off-limits to foreigners until 1991.

Yet Kaliningrad’s proximity to Europe, and its Baltic port, meant it was exposed to far more western influences than the rest of the USSR. Soviet sailors would bring back clothes, books and vinyl from western Europe and beyond.

“People have always likened themselves to Americans – our families all came here from different places across the Soviet Union and created a melting pot with what was practically a new ethos,” says Oleg Kashin, a well-known Russian journalist who was born in Kaliningrad.

The defining symbol of that era is the foreboding House of the Soviets, a world-famous example of brutalist architecture. This unfinished 28-storey building, which locals say resembles a robot’s head jutting out of the earth, stands on the former site of the 13th century Königsberg Castle, whose ruins were blown up in 1968 on the orders of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. (The area around the House of Soviets will house the fan zone for this summer’s World Cup.)

A bus decorated with 2018 Fifa World Cup logos in Kaliningrad. Photograph: David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters

Otherwise, very few of the city’s pre-Soviet buildings survived the twin assaults of an RAF bombing campaign and the Red Army’s three-month operation to capture the city. Today, the most high-profile architectural remains of Kaliningrad’s Prussian past are seven neo-Gothic gates that ring the former city limits, along with the Lutheran cathedral, a redbrick Gothic construction where Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who died here in 1804, is buried. Souvenir stalls do a roaring trade in fridge magnets reading “Kant touch it” and “Yes, I Kant”. Also for sale: miniature busts of Putin and Stalin decorated with amber, the fossilised tree resin for which the region is famous.

As the Soviet past recedes, Kaliningrad is rediscovering its Prussian history: there are calls for the use of alternative Prussian street names and to reconstruct Königsberg Castle.

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The phenomenon has been condemned by local Kremlin supporters as a sign of “Germanisation”. “It’s infantile,” says a state-media journalist, Nikolay Dolgachev, of the interest in Prussian heritage. “It would be like today’s Americans feeling nostalgic about Native American culture.” Pro-Putin political analysts in Moscow have gone further, suggesting that growing enthusiasm for the city’s Prussian past is a sign of creeping separatism.

Critics say the accusations of “Germanisation” are ludicrous. “The term has no basis in reality,” says Dmitry Selin, a former gallery curator.

There have been consequences, though. In 2016, the German-Russian House, a local cultural and educational centre, was forced to close down after being declared a “foreign agent”. And earlier this year, an Aeroflot steward was fired after referring to Kaliningrad as Königsberg ahead of a flight from Moscow.

“Sometimes,” sighs Selin, “I can’t get help but get the feeling that the authorities want to fence us off from Europe.”